A New Economy of War
A splendid army almost demoralized, millions of public property given up or destroyed, thousands of lives. . . sacrificed for no purpose.
- Union General Alpheus Williams

Battle has always found its focus where roads converge. Like so many of the significant points of conflict marking the quarrel between North and South, Manassas, Virginia, was the center of a network of transportation and commerce. Here vital arteries of communication and logistics bisected and connected on what twice became a battlefield on the plains of Manassas, Virginia, near the banks of Bull Run Creek. The iron rails of the Orange, Alexandria and Manassas Gap railroads joined at Manassas Junction, a mere 27 miles from Washington, while the macadam pavement of the Warrenton Turnpike traversed the pastoral fields and woods that soon became a battlefield.

These routes of transportation and communication were rooted in the agricultural economy of Virginia: the turnpike was constructed to transport grain harvests by wagon from the Shenandoah Valley to the markets of Alexandria. The railroads supplanted the turnpike with steam locomotive transportation. The Shenandoah became the "breadbasket of the Confederacy," serving Richmond, the Confederate political and industrial capital.

As the war began, existing arteries of communication were transformed for use in logistical communications, the transport of troops and military materiel to sustain armies on campaign. Threatened by the overwhelming approach of the 35,000 troops of the Union Army of Northeastern Virginia, the Confederate army was put to work defending the vital junction of railroads at Manassas.

At First Manassas, the Manassas Gap Railroad transported 12,000 troops of the Confederate Army of the Shenandoah to bolster General P.G.T. Beauregard's beleaguered Army of the Potomac. In one of the first uses of rails to move armies to battle, the Confederate infusion of reinforcements arrived just in time to stem the Union tide. The crushed Union army retreated, moving quickly back along the turnpike's deteriorated macadam to Washington.

Thirteen months later, the iron rails and tarred gravel brought contending armies to the same pastures and woodlots of Bull Run. The Confederates had abandoned Manassas Junction in the spring of 1862. By August the area had developed as a rich Union depot of supplies to clothe and feed the Army of Virginia. Confederate General Thomas Jackson captured and pillaged the depot, burning the stockpile after his hungry troops feasted on Union delicacies including tinned tongue and lobster. Jackson's wing of the Confederate army then withdrew to Stony Ridge behind an unfinished railroad grade to await the Union's approach. The cuts and fills of this unfinished railroad became an almost impregnable fortification for Jackson's troops in the ensuing battle, as General John Pope strove to dislodge the Confederates with piecemeal assaults upon the embankment.

Beyond Manassas, national economies were harnessed for a protracted struggle to restore the Union or establish Confederate independence. The economic bounty of American agriculture and industry became the target of war. Pope issued harsh orders prior to the Second Manassas campaign. An assault upon the Confederate economy, and upon the populace supporting the Confederacy were implicit in Pope's orders to his troops.

Seizure of civilian property as "contraband of war," formerly a punishable act, was encouraged. The Second Manassas campaign introduced the first vestiges of a new type of warfare, waged upon the economic sustainability of the enemy, under the assumption that a blow struck against the ability of the "secessionists" to support their armies in the field was a legitimate act of war. Whereas the First Battle of Manassas witnessed armies at war, the Second Battle saw a new phase of populaces at war, as civilians became embroiled - whether they wanted to or not - in the soldiers' campaign.

Despite the revolutionary conduct of Pope's campaign, the Union was again defeated; his army retreated with Pope disgraced. This new type of economic warfare would be echoed later, however, with harsher consequences for the Confederates, in the campaigns of Union Generals Sherman and Sheridan in 1864 and 1865.

The economic fibers of the Civil War are spun into threads that flow through the fabric the military campaigns, such as the battles of Manassas. From the sinews of the battlefield (the turnpike and railroads), to the economic roots of the campaigns, economic themes of the war are the warp and weft of the battles of Bull Run.

Railroads were key to
keeping troops supplied
with food and ammunution.

Read more stories about the Economics of the Civil War
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